Morningstar News

Royal Caribbean Group has suspended cruise visits to Labadee, a secluded peninsula in Haiti, for the next seven days following months of escalating gang violence in the country, a senior company executive said in a Facebook post on Thursday.The company will continue the suspension as required with three days advance notice to guests sailing on impacted itineraries, Royal Caribbean International President and CEO Michael Bayley said.Violence by powerful armed gangs had gripped Haiti, causing thousands to flee their homes, after anti-government protests broke out early in February.The violent cl

Yemen's Iran-aligned Houthis claimed responsibility for an attack on a UK-owned cargo ship and a drone assault on an American destroyer on Thursday, and they targeted Israel's port and resort city of Eilat with ballistic missiles and drones.The statement by a Houthi representative on social media site X came shortly after the group's leader said it was ramping up attacks on ships in the Red Sea and other waters - including with new "submarine weapons" -to mirror Israel's military operations in the Gaza Strip.Houthi militants have launched repeated drone and missile strikes in the Red Sea…

Amazon.com Inc and IKEA are among commercial users of container shipping that will opt for zero-carbon marine fuels by 2040 in a new initiative aimed at speeding up decarbonization in the maritime sector, executives said on Tuesday.With about 90% of world trade transported by sea, global shipping accounts for nearly 3% of the world's CO2 emissions and the sector is under growing scrutiny to become cleaner.The initiative, which was organized by the non-profit Aspen Institute and has nine signatories so far also including Unilever and Michelin…

Reinsurers are set to foot most of the bill for the grounding of the ship that halted traffic in the Suez Canal, industry sources said, with payouts expected to run into hundreds of millions of dollars.International supply chains were thrown into disarray when the 400 meter Ever Given ran aground in the canal on March 23, with specialist rescue teams taking almost a week to free the vessel.Around 400 vessels were affected by the canal’s closure, which led to some having to divert around Africa to get supplies to global markets.Ships typically have protection & indemnity (P&I) insurance…

The United States is taking advantage of record-low prices of one of the world's dirtiest fuels by buying record volumes, which it intends to upgrade into cleaner products before new shipping rules take effect, trading and analyst sources say.U.S. trade sources said it recently had become economical to ship fuel oil from countries such as Russia, boosting imports of the product into the United States.This comes even as prices for high-sulphur fuel oil (HSFO) on the U.S. Gulf Coast…

Booming U.S. oil exports have set off a scramble to build Gulf Coast ports to handle more than 3 million barrels per day in new supplies expected over the next five years.Of seven proposed oil-export projects, nowhere is the opportunity greater or the competition more fierce than in Corpus Christi, Texas, where three firms are vying to open the state's first deepwater port.Commodities trader Trafigura has taken an early lead with a planned offshore facility that has an easier…

Port officials on Tuesday are expected to consider $300 million in financing that would prepare the country's largest oil-export port - Corpus Christi, Texas - to handle a surge in U.S. shale production over the next five years.International buyers would like more U.S. crude but are unable to get it because of infrastructure constraints along the U.S. Gulf Coast. Terminals originally designed for imports only recently have revamped operations to handle exports including accepting…

Oil tankers carrying around 10 million barrels of U.S. crude are en route to Asia, according to shipping data and trade sources, as U.S. producers take advantage of favorable prices to ship to the region while OPEC ponders further supply cuts next week. At least eight tankers are in transit, sources said and the shipping data in Thomson Reuters Eikon showed, with one of them carrying the first ever cargo of Southern Green Canyon crude purchased by Japanese refiner Cosmo Energy. Another contains the first Alaskan North Slope cargo to arrive in Asia in eight months.

U.S. East Coast refiners are looking to buy increasing volumes of domestic crude oil from the Gulf Coast, two sources said, the latest twist in a trade flow upheaval in the wake of the opening of the Dakota Access pipeline. Major U.S. East Coast refiners profited from railing hundreds of thousands of barrels of discounted Bakken crude to their plants daily from 2013 until 2015. But as more and more pipelines were built in North Dakota, the discount began to disappear, and so did the rail cars. Now, at least two East Coast refiners, Phillips 66 and Delta Air Lines Inc's subsidiary Monroe Energy, are looking to move more crude by ship from Texas into the Philadelphia area.

U.S. Gulf Coast refiners are cashing in on rising fuel demand from Mexico, shipping record volumes to a southern neighbor that has failed to expand its refining network to supply a fast-growing economy. The fuel trade could top a million barrels per day (bpd) at times in 2017 as Mexico becomes increasingly dependent on the United States for strategic energy supplies and providing business worth more than $15 billion a year to refiners such as Valero, Marathon Petroleum and Citgo Petroleum. The rise in Mexico's fuel imports reflects an economy that, after expanding for 27 quarters in a row even amid a public austerity plan, has been unable to increase its refining output to satisfy the consistent growth of its energy demand.

The bullish view for Suncor Energy Inc (SU.TO), Cenovus Energy Inc (CVE.TO) and other Canadian energy producers calls for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau by next month to approve a major pipeline expansion to the west coast, boosting sales of land-locked oil sands crude to Asia. But a growing number of shipping brokers and physical oil traders warn that any new influx of oil will hit a bottleneck in Vancouver, because of the port's inability to accept the megaships that dominate oil trade globally. This bottleneck marks one of the more under appreciated hurdles facing Canadian oil sands crude being shipped from its busiest port of Vancouver, these shipping brokers say. Middle Eastern producers already ship oil ship to Asia far more cheaply, thanks to the bigger vessels they employ. And U.S.

The FTSE4Good Index is a leading indicator used by investors who place importance on corporate social responsibility and sustainability. Approximately 800 global companies from 25 countries around the world are listed in the FTSE4Good Global Index as of July 2015, and 176 of those companies are Japanese. NYK’s environmental activities were seen as particularly noteworthy and led to this13th consecutive recognition. NYK also has been selected for a number of SRI indexes, including the Dow Jones Sustainability Asia / Pacific Index (USA) and Morningstar (Japan). NYK, as a good corporate citizen, will continue to take an active role in social issues, including conservation of the environment, to contribute to the achievement of a better global society.

Six years after applying to build the Keystone XL pipeline, Canada's frustrated oil industry appears steadfast in its support of the plan even though Washington has again delayed a decision on whether to approve the politically charged project. The reason is simple: A massive new pipeline to the U.S. Gulf Coast remains the most elegant solution for producers looking to export burgeoning supplies of crude from Canada's oil sands to the United States. TransCanada Corp's $5.4 billion pipeline would seamlessly pump enough crude from Alberta to Texas to meet 4 percent of total U.S. demand. "We're definitely supportive of the project," said Brad Bellows, a spokesman for MEG Energy Corp, which produces crude from Alberta's oil sands though it has not committed to ship on Keystone.

The transient fuel dock at Morningstar Marinas Mayport has recently been replaced. Located at the Mayport Inlet just East of Jacksonville, Fla., the fuel dock replacement was part of the complete redevelopment of the marina waterfront. “The basin was in-operable and the fuel dock had been destroyed in a collision,” reported Matt Shapiro, Assistant Vice President of Morningstar Properties. Morningstar Properties hired Bellingham Marine to replace the 14-ft by 229-ft fuel dock. “We built the original fuel dock in 1994,” said Ron Carey, Manager of Project Development for Bellingham Marine.

CEO Dan Stabbert and Paul Madden, Head of Sales, announced the sale of the 308 ft ex-NOAA Research Ship Sahara to a European buyer. This vessel is currently undergoing a complete re-fit and conversion at Stabbert Yacht and Ship (SYS) in Seattle. The vessel will be exported from the US and may benefit from a new export financing program that SYS is offering to international buyers. Under this program, Stabbert is able to offer competitive financing for buyers by guaranteeing term financing to creditworthy international buyers for purchases of U.S. vessels and refit/conversion services.